KNIGHT NUI

Celebrating 5 years!

5 Years of Us!

You'll be able to find all our 5-year celebrations up here. There's going to be some great stuff.

Five years of Games of the Year...

Five years of the forums...

Five years caught in our documentry...

Five years of KNTV...

Five years of Doctor Who...

The Comprehensive Back-Catalogue Guide:

The Top 10 GameCube Games
Of
All Time

It’s dying. Rewind just a few short years and there where sections of shelves bursting with budget-priced GameCube classics. While time has not been kind to many of the must-loved purple boxes so-called hits, (We’re talking to you, Wario World) others have been delivered through what many called ‘Nintendo’s Lost Generation’ to present us with some all-time classics that may well one day stands up to the likes of Ocarina of Time and Super Mario World. And so, in the first of our new regular Comprehensive Back-Catalogue Guide feature, we’re going to pick out the top ten tiny discs you simply must own...

NOTE: For the sake of argument, we’ve excluded The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, as that will be featuring in the Wii list, and so we’ve left it out. If you’re looking to this for backwards compatibility, then get the Wii version. Controls and enhanced graphics lead to a marginally more enjoyable experience.

#10: F-Zero GX

#9: Beyond Good & Evil

Until 2003, it was commonly believed that nothing could move faster than the speed of light. Nintendo, however, proved those conventional thinkers wrong by creating a racing game so quick Sonic the Hedgehog almost topped himself through jealousy- Ironic, considering the game was also made by Sega. While playing something that moves faster than we can see is quite tricky using a television, it was worth it- The amount of customisation available meant that provided you weren’t going for defaults, no two cars where the same and would provide different styles.

Nintendo’s classic high-octane racer has never been better, with many modes and a brilliant multi-player offering making it a racing game like no other and certainly the best on the GameCube, arguably of the past generation. The sense of speed has never been matched and the graphics are amongst the best on the console. Highly recommended, even if it has only reached number ten.

Beyond Good & Evil may star a woman who wears green lipstick, but nothing about it is unfashionable in the slightest. From France’s answer to Shigeru Miyamoto, Michael ‘Rayman’ Ancel, it ended up as arguably his greatest piece of work. A fully cinematic experience from start to (Disappointingly soon) end, it has to be one of the most immersive games we’ve ever played- You will feel as if you’re a part of heroine Jade’s world. The story is excellent and told with such aplomb you’ll want to keep playing just because of that, and all of this is done without a 90-minute cutscene in sight.

The gameplay itself is also fantastic, playing out a bit like a Zelda game that’s been refined Hideo Kojima. Stealth sections are excellent, although it’s the more open adventure segments that produce the most fun. While it may not break the 20-hour boundary, Beyond Good & Evil is a magical game that will live very long in your memory.

#8: Animal Crossing

We do not want to know how long we’ve spent in Animal Crossing. Hour after hour after hour is poured into the game, as you tinker away at your garden and try and make your little village the best place is possibly can be. While the concept is more suited to a handheld console, this is actually bigger and better than the DS version (As well as the more recent Wii one).

With more villagers, bigger towns (Without being overwhelming or losing the charm), more events, more occasional characters and unlockable NES games in their entirety, you can’t argue against this as the best sim game on the GameCube and also the definitive version of Anima Crossing, a game everyone simply has to play.

#7: Pikmin 2

Pikmin had something about it. It was clearly a very good game, although it just had something getting in the way of that genius breaking out. It was also a very short game, meaning that gamers couldn’t help but wish for more, especially after the slight disappointment felt as they realised the game wasn’t quite at the standard they’d hoped for. Pikmin 2 fixed all of this and with it, because not only more of the most accessible but also the most downright enjoyable Real Time Strategy titles ever made.

The Pikmin had real character, the co-op play was excellent, the game was sufficient in length, the day limit was removed, more puzzles where splashed in than before... The game also had real variety that few titles of this sort manage to produce. Every level brought something new, or at least a new viewpoint from which to address an old situation. Pikmin 2 defiantly had something about it.

#6: Viewtiful Joe

Now adays, it doesn’t seem like 2D Platforming will ever die- Indeed, the Wii’s two big Christmas launches both this and last year have been from that genre, yet rewind to 2003 and the type of games that had previously ruled the world was seemingly lying on its own, before clambering into its’ grave. In steps Viewtiful Joe, a wonderful, brightly-coloured platformer with an awesome combat system that simply had to be played to be believed.

As part of the Capcom Six, Viewtiful Joe was set to be GameCube’s biggest third-party exclusive and even though it eventually made its way to PS2, the title was a ‘Cube game at heart- It showed that Capcom, unlike most developers, get what works on a Nintendo system. They get the bright colours and the hectic action. They get that a game must be, above all else, fun to play. They get that, and because of that, Viewtiful Joe gets the Number Six spot on our list. Honourable mentions go to the sequel and Alien Hominoid, both of which were excellent little games, which could have been the key factors for the modern revenge of the 2D platformer.